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Paragraphs?

There are paragraphs indicated in my printed NASB, NIV and NKJ but they do not appear in the Bibleworks versions on my computer.
Do I not have some option not turned on or are they not in the database?

There are no paragraph markers in BW, nor to my knowledge any immediate plans to add them. When BW gets the text from the publishers it is without that stuff and so even if it were possible to add them, they would all have to be gone through by hand.

Not just icing...

I agree whole heartedly. It is inaccurate to represent a translation without paragraph or poetical markers. While the original text may have not had "paragraph marks" (it did not have chapters or verses either), the translators of various versions put a lot of thought into where they divided the flow of thought in Scripture. (Some gave more thought to it than others...I'd venture to guess.) I think that these paragraph markers are not just "icing on the cake" but actually a part of the "cake" of translation.

And the other guys have them...

I agree!

Paragraph breaks and poetry formatting in English versions and italics in the Greek for direct quotations from the OT are wonderful features from the paper versions that we currently have to live without in BW.

I wonder whether the texts arrive without paragraph breaks though, since several competing products have them. (I know they're available in NET.) We've been told in the past that BibleWorks was intially designed to work with one verse at a time. In that case, a paragraph mark would almost never be useful. Maybe that's why they're not there? It would definitely be one more step toward making verse range and browse modes more useful.

I'm pretty happy with BW 6 (especially with the settign to remember verse ranges), but I would upgrade to BW 7 for paragraph and poetry formatting. (Italics in Greek would make me really happy! )

Paragraphs

Originally Posted by pastor-steve

I wonder whether the texts arrive without paragraph breaks though, since several competing products have them.

The answer is yes and no. I have seen quite a few raw texts provided by different publishers, and some Bibles include paragraph information, while others do not. Generally speaking, many of the newer versions do.

I quite agree, and am pleasantly surprised at how much other agreement you've received. I might have expected a dozen or two replies telling you that paragraph and poetry marks are for sissies, BW is perfect just as it is, and it's asking too much to asking busy programmers to change it. I might also have expected suggestions that you should just look them all up and put them in the text editor... when it isn't crashing. It's nice that we have such relative unanimity on this.

Miss the paragraph

Like everyone else, I miss the paragraph markings. Perhaps they were not as useful in the original languages, but they are essential for understanding in English. Imagine doing away with several letters of an ancient language or taking away one or two verb tenses and see how the language would be crippled. Losing paragraph and poetry divisions in English cripples our language in the same way.

Studying a passage verse by verse is helpful, but passages reveal their true meaning when seen in complete context. Actually, the better one can grasp the whole context of the passage the better one really understands the particular verse. Not having these divisions in the English translations hinders the contextual understanding of the passage. The other Bible program I use keeps the formating supplied by the different versions, and you can even choose to copy them with or without formating. I assume they come with the formating from the publishers since the divisions are the same as they are in my print versions. Perhaps BW will consider adding the formating in BW7.